On this day in 1948 Norman Mailer’s first novel, The Naked and the Dead was published. A front-page editorial in the London Sunday Times lobbied to have the book withdrawn for its “incredibly foul and beastly,” language, but most reviewers ranked it among the best war novels, and conferred upon Mailer a celebrity status that he claimed to regret.

On this day in 1810 Lord Byron swam the Hellespont, in emulation of Leander’s legendary swims to visit his beloved Hero. Byron was twenty-two, and not yet famous for his poetry or his profligacy — though he had just finished a draft of Childe Harold, and just ended an affair with a married woman who, while no Hero, had moved Byron to challenge another to a sunrise duel.

On this day in 1594, Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew was entered in the Stationers’ Register. Much of the main plot seems to come from a 1550 popular ballad called “Here Begynneth a Merry Jest of a Shrewde and Curste Wyfe, Lapped in Morrelles Skin, for her Good Behaviour.” By the endeth, this contribution to the shrew-taming canon was merry from only one perspective.

On this day in 1919, twenty-two-year-old William Faulkner published his first prose, a short story entitled “Landing in Luck.” It is a lighthearted tale about an air force cadet’s first solo flight, and it gives little sign of the style or fame to come, but the autobiographical details behind its telling are pure, playful Faulkner. They also might make the author worthy of his hero’s description as “the biggest liar in the R. A. F.”

On this day in 1980 Alfred Hitchcock died. Hitchcock borrowed from a long list of 20th century novelists, but in one of his last public appearances he showed a wider range by borrowing from Thomas de Quincey’s 1827 essay, “On Considering Murder as One of the Fine Arts.” He then bid the gala crowd farewell: “They tell me that murder is committed every minute, so I don’t want to waste any more of your time. I know you want to get to work. Thank You.”

On this day in 1958, Lawrence Durrell’s Mountolive was published, his third novel in the series commonly known as The Alexandria Quartet. It was a Book of the Month Club selection and highly praised at the time; though vigorously defended by some, the series is neglected now, or ridiculed as “fake exoticism” and “potted wisdom.”

On this day in 1882 Ralph Waldo Emerson died at the age of seventy-eight. Although Emerson’s last decade was one of increasing debility it was also one of international accolade and local adulation. When the Sage of Concord returned from his last trip abroad he found the band playing, the schoolchildren singing and his burned home rebuilt by the community.

On this day in 1893 Anita Loos was born. Loos started writing scenarios for D. W. Griffith while in her teens, and eventually worked on over sixty films, but her most enduring creation is the 1925 novel, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, reviewed by the Times Literary Supplement as “a masterpiece of comic literature.”

On this day in 1898 William S. Porter — the drug store clerk, cowboy, fugitive, bank teller, cartoonist and future “O. Henry” — began a five-year prison sentence for embezzlement. Porter had published several stories prior to his prison term, but the fourteen written behind bars represented a new style and quality, and began his rise to fame.

On this day in 1616 both William Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes died, and this is also the generally accepted day of Shakespeare’s birth in 1564. This alignment of the literary stars requires some calendar juggling – a mathematical adjustment to bring Spain’s Gregorian calendar in line with Elizabethan England’s Julian calendar – but it has prompted UNESCO to declare today “World Book and Copyright Day.”